Sad day for Star Trek fans
Nichelle Nichols, who broke barriers for Black women in Hollywood as communications officer Lt. Uhura on the original “Star Trek” television series, has died at the age of 89.
Her role in the 1966-69 series earned Nichols a lifelong position of honour with the series' rabid fans, known as Trekkies. It also earned her accolades for breaking stereotypes that had limited Black women to acting roles as servants and included an interracial onscreen kiss with co-star William Shatner that was unheard of at the time. It was a first in TV history.
Shatner tweeted Sunday: “She was a beautiful woman & played an admirable character that did so much for redefining social issues both here in the US & throughout the world.”
George Takei, who shared the bridge of the USS Enterprise with her as Sulu in the original “Star Trek” series, called her trailblazing and incomparable. “For today, my heart is heavy, my eyes shining like the stars you now rest among, my dearest friend,” he tweeted.
Like other original cast members, Nichols also appeared in six big-screen spinoffs starting in 1979 with “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and frequented fan conventions. She also served for many years as a NASA recruiter, helping bring minorities and women into the astronaut corps.
More recently, she had a recurring role on television’s “Heroes”, playing the great-aunt of a young boy with mystical powers.
She often recalled how Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of the show and praised her role. She met him at a civil rights gathering in 1967, at a time when she had decided not to return for the show's second season.
“'You’ve changed the face of television forever, and therefore, you've changed the minds of people,”' she said the civil rights leader told her.
“That foresight Dr. King had was a lightning bolt in my life,” Nichols said.
She began singing and dancing at age 14 in Chicago before getting her first break in Hollywood with a small part in 1959’s “Porgy and Bess” starring Sidney Poitier.